Locus of Control, Causal Attributions, and Self-Esteem: A Comparison between Prisoners

Abstract

In France, prisoners can be employed in building sites controlled by the penitentiary system but outside the prison. Prisoners involved in these special sentence-serving conditions were asked to fill out questionnaires testing their self-esteem, attitudes toward conformist and nonconformist behavior, attributions about their crime, and the locus of control. In this article, Weiner’s attributional theory of motivation and emotion is discussed. In addition to the three basic dimensions he proposed—locus of control, stability, and controllability—the contribution of self-esteem is examined. The answers given by these prisoners were compared with answers provided by prisoners in jail. The results may have implications for the treatment of criminal and delinquent behavior, because knowledge of prisoners’ attributions and beliefs about whether people are capable of changing their own behavior can help social workers, judges, therapists, and prison wardens achieve more successful psychological rehabilitation in prisoners.